Question about duck's water.....

[chickenlisa]

I have a large baby pool for my ducks to swim in. There are 8 ducks in all now. Their water is getting gross every 4 days now i(high temp days.) I mean gross as in green algae like water. I was away on vacation and came home to find it like this. I'm wondering if I can change the water but add a little clorox or something to discourage algae from growing...I don't have a pump to empty it out, so I bail it out as soon as I can, but sometimes it gets like that so quickly. Would anything help keep algae from gowing, but not hurt my ducks? I don't want anything to hurt them. Any advice?
Thanks
Lisa

 

[serendipity22]

I'm curious about this reply...

I, too, have a baby pool for my 2 ducks. They are the messiest things on my whole farm. Their water gets changed every day cause it's so yucky.

 

[wren]

I've heard of people using barley straw to help prevent algae in ponds. Never tried it myself though.

 

[SandraChick]

I've recently started adding some bleach to the water when I clean it....I have a long handled scrub brush that I scrub the kiddie pool with.....here's what I do


*Empty the pool.
*Add some clean water...maybe about an inch...
*Add ~1/4 C of bleach...maybe a tad more.
*Use the scrub brush lightly around all the sides and the bottom
* If it's really bad (which the first time I did it, it was)- Dump the bleach water IN A SAFE PLACE (I put it in a bucket out of reach of all the animals and let the bleach disapate). Otherwise...now it's not bad, so I use less bleach and at the end of the light scrub, I just add water. There's so little bleach in there at the end, that it smells less bleachy than our municipal water in winter....so I figure it can't be too bad. I also typically do the cleaning in the evening....so most of the chlorine evaporates/disapates by morning anyway.

I no longer have algae in the pool..just a little muck/mud at the bottom and I clean it once a week to week and a half. With eight ducks though....I'd expect to clean it twice a week (at least once a week) anyways. I had three ducks...and every 7 to 9 days seems to do the trick for me.

Good Luck
Sandra

 

[fishkiller]

Direct sunlight into the pool will increase the amount of algae. Try it in a shady spot if you can.

 

[chickenlisa]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I'll try the bleach when I wash it out everytime...also if I can I'll try to connect another tarp over the top of their pen over that pool to shade it more...I have 1 tarp over the opposite corner now and their food trough is under that tarp..however when it rains sideways, the food still gets wet and mushy. They don't seem to mind wet mushy food much though. They do mind the green water in the pool though. How do ducks who swim in ponds do it? That water is always brown or green isn't it?
Thanks again.
Lisa

 

[GoodEgg]

I'm glad to see this thread. I was wondering too.

I haven't been able to empty my bigger pool like I usually do, and it got very green.

The ducks seem to LOVE it though?

I make sure to put their feed FAR away from the pool, next to a smaller pool that has fresh water every day, but they still sometimes run to the green pool to drink.

AND if I give them anything like lettuce (and sometimes the stuff they find in the yard) ... they drag it into the green-water pool and drag it through the water before eating it???

I don't get it. But when they were babies and I kept them in a pen, I used to give them a small pool with fresh water every day, and almost every day I pulled LOTS of weeds and added it to the water in the morning. They seemed to adore swimming with the weeds and eating them, much more so than just eating them from the yard. I know ducks in ponds like to dive and eat green plants, so I thought I was making them very happy.

Now they like the green water, and dragging any plant-based food through it?

At any rate, the pool is getting a scrub tomorrow. FINALLY! (I had to get a hose section today to drain it.)

trish

 

[bantymum]

My duck blowup pool gets emptied every 3rd day, I grab it and lift from one end so it waterfalls out into a ditch, this ditch then becomes their fave place to smell out worms and wallow. then they rinse off in their fresh new pool.
The ditch gets sediment from the pooinfused dirty water that goes into it then holds water better over time!

My Ducks toilet in their blowup pool and this leaves the surrounding grass area free from droppings to tread on!!

Every now and then i buy them a brand new pool, at the moment they are in a pink pool, this colour goes nicely with their little yellow beaks and white bodies!!!
I havent had algae probs yet.
I also throw grass etc into pond and have a small deep water container (old saucepan) next to their feed.

 

[waterfowlrescue]

I have some larger pools with drains that makes it easy to clean and I pop the drains out and install a piece of tubing that redirects the water anywhere i want.

We use vinegar to clean the pools. It retards algae growth and is safe for just about anything it comes in contact with and is great for odors.

We change our pools a bit more often than every 4 days though. Smaller pools are changed every day and the larger ones twice a week or sooner if needed.

 

[silkiechicken]

Don't have ducks but my turtle pool turns green in about 3 days... amaizing how the tiny gold fish stay alive in that muck... and survive being poured out and dumped back into cold tapwater from the hose... what ever happened to the whole change 10% of water at time max to keep fish alive thing? I abuse the suckers and they just keep on growing... if the turtles don't eat them that is.